Differences in the Psychological Adjustment of Accelerated Eighth Grade Students.

Sayler, Michael F.

The academic, social, and emotional benefits of acceleration are widely known. Yet criticism and reluctance to use this educational intervention persist. Some school personnel and families fear that children who accelerate through grades will experience serious social or emotional adjustment problems. This research project compared a nationally representative sample of well-adjusted and poorly-adjusted accelerants so as to examine the differences in adjustment among individual accelerants. The sample was drawn from the National Longitudinal Study: 88 data base. Surprisingly, results showed that the best adjusted and least adjusted accelerants were similar in many ways. There were no significant differences for gender, race, family size, birth order, family composition, income, educational level of parents, kind of school, percentage of minority students in their school, serious behavior difficulties, certain out-of-school activities, community type, or community location. However, parental involvement in a child's school and education, and access to accelerated, advanced, enriched, or gifted classes were more often associated with healthy adjustment. Therefore, the differences in well adjusted and poorly adjusted accelerants appear to be related to the ways that parents and schools interact with their students. Contains 16 references. (Author/RJM)